FAO launches sustainable agriculture digital platform

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched a new digital platform on Tuesday to assist small scale farmers in improving food security and the sustainable use of natural resources and land.

The platform is designed to be a “one-stop shop” for information, data and legislation on the agriculture sector with the aim of improving farmers’ efforts to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

 FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva (pictured) said: “Family farmers feed our communities and take care of our earth — they are crucial allies in the fight against hunger and rural poverty.”

The Family Farming Knowledge Platform will include worldwide data on family farming including public programmes, national and regional legislation, statistics, case studies and academic research and will enable governments to formulate more effective policies in support of family farmers and encourage dialogue with the relevant organisations.

Francesco Pierri, Chief of the Advocacy Unit in FAO’s Office for Partnerships, Advocacy and Capacity Development, said: “There was a need to share knowledge on family farming-on the different kinds of policies that governments have implemented and the numerous activities of family farmers and their organizations in the field. There is a lot of information available on the web, but it’s scattered — we wanted one single access point for all the information out there, for anybody working in this field to use.”

The new platform is seen as result of the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) that was held in 2014 and drew attention to family farmers and the global challenge of feeding a population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.

The FAO has launched the platform in collaboration with a variety of partners including governments, UN agencies, NGOs and research organisations.

The initiatives Government partners will provide crucial content for the platform’s legal database that will enable users to browse through a catalogue of global family farming-related policies and programmes.

When the platform has been established as an international information point, a second phase will be aimed at expanding the initiative to host online policy dialogues.

Family farming covers crops, fisheries, forestry and livestock production, and research shows the vast majority are smallholders or peasant farmers with around 72 per cent of the world’s farms are smaller than one hectare and only 6 per cent larger than five hectares.

FAO research shows that small scale family is essential to local food security and in maintaining biodiversity by preserving traditional food products.

Small scale farms enhance the sustainable use of natural resources and are central to breaking cycles of rural poverty due to their potential to boost local economies and family incomes.